Home > Letters to CRScott Dubin On My Calling Final Crisis Idea Lightposted June 13, 2010

"I read all of Final Crisis like three times and I couldn't tell you about one idea it extolled beyond looking up its own ass and giving a thumbs-up to the general, grand spectacle of imaginative superhero comics."

Huh, really?

Metron has a role similar to the aliens in 2001 a space odyssey, helping the first humans in the opening scene evolve to a higher intelligence, so he can use a tool (the torch) to save his tribe.

The scene is reminiscent of Prometheus giving fire to humanity, but fire represents higher level thinking in the comic (the cave man in the opening scene paints the Metron symbol after the experience)

Later, Darkseed will have people burning books and saying they don't need fire (though that may have been in a tie in one shot, come to think of it, but I think it was Morrison written, )

Darkseed is connected with the negetive parts of the human psyche- greed, selfishness, ignorance, while Metron is the more evolved parts of our consciousness,art literature, mercy, language.

Neither Darkseed of Metron ever really kill anyone (except, maybe that one guy Darkseed possesses). Darkseed wants to create a "holocaust on earth" keeping people alive but in a hell state. The gods are ultimately symbol forms for the human psyche, playing out their battle in the human collective unconscous.

There's other stuff going on as well (and one level, its just a game connecting all of Kirby's old stories, since he worked on New God stuff and 2001 a space odyssey and caveman books!), and this theme goes off the railroad track around issue 5 or so (I didn't think the end was very good)

These are all themes Morrison has played with before. In the end of his JLA run the main villain is triggering the primitive (Lizard) parts of the brain, which Animal Man figures out, and they trigger the higher parts to temporarily evolve humanity to be like Superman.

Not having ideas is a weird accusation to label at Morrison, who's usually accused of having too many.... and not developing them enough.